An Honorable Defeat ARC

"By February 1865, the end was clearly in sight for the Confederate government. Lee's defeat at Gettysburg had dashed the hopes of its army, and Grant's victory at Vicksburg had cut the South in two. An Honorable Defeat is the story of the four months that saw the surrender of the South and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by Southern partisans. It is also the story of two men, antagonists yet political partners, who struggled to achieve their own differing visions: Jefferson Davis, autocratic president of the Confederate States, who vowed never to surrender whatever the cost, and his secretary of war, General John C. Breckinridge, who hoped pragmatism would save the shattered remnants of the land he so loved.". "William C. Davis traces the astounding journey of these men, and the entire Confederate cabinet, as they fled Richmond by train, then by mule, then on foot. Using original research, he narrates, with dramatic style and clear historical accuracy, the futile quarrels of the two men as they continued their flight from their eventual fate."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.